


Stay

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:49:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when John Watson had believed that there was nothing worse than Sherlock Holmes dead.  </p><p>He had been wrong.  </p><p>There were so many things worse than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a little something about all we didn't see in the hospital in "His Last Vow", and I found the deleted scene that was recently released in the Season 3 special edition to be so wholly unsettling and upsetting that I had to write a little something to counter it. 
> 
> This story takes place between the time when Mary and Magnussen make their visits, but before Janine makes hers.
> 
> This is NOT a part of my ongoing "The Homecoming" series.

It’s late, or rather very, very early.  John’s hands and clothes are still stained with Sherlock’s blood.  Visiting hours are long over, but John is here because Mycroft has somehow managed to work some of his rare magic.

_“You_ are _staying, John.”_

_“He’s pulled through.  He’s out of surgery.  I should get home to Mary, and visiting hours are only…”_

_“No.  She’ll come to you.  You’ll stay.”_

The line had clicked dead and he couldn’t argue, didn’t want to, truth be told.  He wanted to be here, it was where he belonged.  So, why did he want to be far away too, far from this hospital, this horror, this man, everything his life had become these last few months.  

There was a time when John Watson had believed that there was nothing worse than Sherlock Holmes dead.  

He had been wrong.  

There were so many things worse than that.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock looks boyish.  He is small, diminished somehow—skin pale, features lax, small slivers of iris visible beneath slit lids which weep tears at small intervals, and for reason’s John has yet to determine.  The amount of morphine he is on is the highest dose possible and still he gasps and whimpers in his sleep.

John worries that death may take him still.  He had no right surviving such a wound.  It should have killed him. It did.  But here he is, breathing slow, even and then shallow, gasping as he is wracked with pain, or perhaps only the dark dreams that morphine brings.

John gets up from the chair by the window, checks the morphine drip, leafs through the pages of the chart clipped to the end of the bed for the umpteenth time.  He paces a circuit of the room, trailing fingers over flowers, so many flowers: carnations from The Yard, foxgloves from Mrs. Hudson, some hideous and macabre funeral wreath of black roses from Pentonville, a single dark red rose from--'W'

John watches the crushed, sodden red petals, the small pieces of torn cardstock--the last remnants of The Woman’s calling card--as they swirl about the bowl of the toilet and down the drain.  He takes a deep breath, walks to the sink, clings to the pristine white porcelain with trembling hands.   The man who stares back from the mirror over the basin is a stranger, the rings beneath his eyes deep, bruised.  Old.  He looks decades older.  And this isn’t the sort of aging a quick shave can wipe from your face.  There are no easy solutions this time, no magic tricks.  There is no way he can turn back the clock and forget that he’s nearly lost the man outside again.  There is no way to ignore the fact that he knows, wife and baby or not, he would not have survived it again.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock is so still.  Nothing moves but the fingers of his right hand, scratching against the thin hospital blanket like he is measuring out random strings of morris code.  He gasps, shudders, grows still.  John checks the morphine yet again.  

The sun is coming up.  The nighttime quiet of the hospital is slowly giving way to early morning bustle.  His phone vibrates in his pocket.  he pulls it out and glances at the screen.

_Did you sleep at all? X_

_A little._

He lies so easily to her, but why cause her needless worry.  

_How is he? X_

_Sleeping.  In some pain.  Delirious from the morphine.  I’m staying._

_You should come home.  Shower.  Eat. X_

_I’m fine._

He’s not, of course, and Mary no doubt knows this, but she doesn’t text again, so evidently she accepts it.

He’d left him once, at Mary’s behest and despite Mycroft’s insistence, late the morning after it happened.  He’d gone home for a few hours while Mary sat with Sherlock.  He’d showered, changed, packed a small bag (just in case), had eaten a sandwich and a glass of milk.

But, it had felt like betrayal, leaving him for even such a short time.  Anything could have happened in those few hours.  And when Mary told him that she had left him alone for a half hour or so, had wandered down to the first floor cafeteria for a muffin and a coffee, he had snapped at her, furious that she could have been so negligent.  

_ “What if something had happened?!” _

_ “What on earth could have happened?  He is resting, drugged, hooked up to thousands of pounds worth of monitoring equipment.  If he lets out so much as a hiccup there will be three nurses in his room in an instant.  Calm down, John.” _

He can’t even remember what he said next, but there was shouting, and buzzing pressure behind his eyes.  There was the hurried squelch of rubber soles on linoleum, and a nurse with an adamant expression hissing at him to be quiet or he would be escorted out.  But it was Mary who had left.  Mary who had stayed away in the two days since.

Everything was unravelling somehow.  Nothing felt right anymore.  He wants Sherlock to wake up, to look him in the eye, to tell him everything, to explain that there is a plan, that all of this is part of some elaborate, ridiculous plan.

 

* * *

 

On the fourth day, John dials down the morphine, just a little.  He needs to see Sherlock’s eyes open, needs to know he sees him, knows he is there, that he’s been there from the start, that he’ll be there for as long as he needs. 

When Sherlock begins to stir, John moves from his usual perch in the chair by the window, to the one beside Sherlock’s bed.  He waits.  

When Sherlock moans, it travels through every vein, every nerve, every cell of John’s body and aches, bone-deep.  He almost reaches across and dials the morphine up again—almost.  

_Just open your eyes._

Veins like small tributaries pulse and flow, muted grey-blue beneath the pale, thin skin on the back of Sherlock’s hand.  When John slips his own hand atop Sherlock’s it feels like fire against the ice of Sherlocks flesh.  He trembles, and he isn’t sure if the vibrations emanate from him or from the man laying prostrate before him.  It hardly matters anymore.

Sherlock’s eyes roll beneath closed lids, his lips part slightly, and a deep furrow knits between his brows.  His lips move, like he might speak, but then press together again as his whole body tenses, and he pulls his hand weakly, but determinedly from beneath John’s.  

John sits back and Sherlock’s eyes open, awash with tears.

“Hey.”  John forces a smile.

The tears break free at the corners of Sherlock’s eyes, and run down his temples and into his hair.  He blinks three, four, five times.  “John…?”  His voice is hoarse with disuse and dryness.  

John pours water from the bottle on the table beside the bed into a small plastic cup, raises Sherlock’s bed a little, presses the cup to his lips.  And Sherlock drinks, his eyes on John’s face, searching for something.  Something…

“How long?”  after John has lowered the cup again.

“Four days.”

Sherlock’s eyes slide shut.

“You were extremely lucky.  You died you know.  They—they say you died.”

“Ludicrous.”

“It wasn’t.  You did.  I’ve seen your chart.”

Sherlock’s eyes remain closed.  he says nothing.

“Who, Sherlock?  Who did this.”

“Not now.”  It’s weak and laced with pain-induced tension.

“Do you want more morphine?”

Sherlock’s head lolls back and forth.  “Not yet.”  It’s thready and raw, little more than a whisper.  “Why are you here?”

“Where else would I be?”  before his mind catches up with his mouth.  He’s tired.  Too tired.  Mary’s right.  he needs to sleep.

Sherlock’s eyes do open then, they study him, and he lets them.  Sherlock’s tongue darts out to moisten his dry, chapped lips.  His nostrils flare a little as he inhales sharply in pain.

“That’s it.  I’m turning up the morphine.”

“No.  Not yet.  It—It’s alright.  Not yet.”  Sherlock’s hand lifts from the bed just a little, stretches over the mattress toward John and then drops again.  

John pulls the chair closer, rests his hand on the coverlet beside Sherlock’s.  

“How long have you been here?”

“The whole time.”

He sees confusion pass over Sherlock’s eyes.

“With the exception of a few hours the morning after,” he amends.  “Mary stayed with you, and I went home to shower and get some things.”

Sherlock’s lips form into a small ‘O’ and then his eyes slide shut again.  He inhales deeply through his nose, holds it, lets go.  “Don’t go home.  John.  Promise me.  Promise me you won’t go home.”

His voice breaks, and it is the most vulnerable he has ever heard Sherlock.  There is pain, and need, but above all there is fear, something almost akin to terror in his tone.

“Yeah.  Right.  No.  I—I’m not leaving, Sherlock.  I’m staying here.  I’m staying right here.”

Sherlock breathes deeply a few times, as though trying to recenter himself.  “Good.”

John’s fingers have slid over to rest between Sherlock’s, their fingers lightly meshed together, and the trembling, the trembling is definitely Sherlock’s now.

“I’m not going, okay.  I promise.”

Sherlock just nods once, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly against John’s.  His eyes are still closed.

“I’m here.  For as long as you need me.”

Sherlock fumbles weakly with his other hand, and reaches back to turn up his morphine drip.  He sighs as a new hit races through his blood stream.  “I always need you, John…” in a whisper as he drifts back into the insulating embrace of the morphine, cotton wool, smoke and mirrors.


End file.
